On chronometricals and horologicals

Yesterday I mentioned that in addition to the style of Pierre, its perceived message was also a problem for early readers. At a structural turning point in the novel, when Pierre is traveling with his new “wife” Isabel from country to city, he finds a fragment of a pamphlet based on the philosophy of one Plotinus Plinlimmon, on “chronometricals and horologicals.” The fragment is of course inserted into the narrative.

Briefly, the pamphlet outlines advice for ethical conduct. It uses the analogy of chronometers and horologes: chronometers are completely reliable, and can be carried across the sea from England to China, still faithfully telling the time in Greenwich when the bearer is in Shanghai. But, critically, that time is not the true time in Shanghai, as true as it may be for far-distant Greenwich. Perfect Christian virtue in the imitation of the divine is like a chronometer. Trying to follow such a virtuous course would be telling the right time for heaven, not for earth, where such a course of action might even be absurd. Men must instead follow horological time, leading a generally good and ethical life but recognizing the impossibility of complete sinlessness, and deeming the attempt foolish. “And thus, though the earthly widsom of man be heavenly folly to God; so also, conversely, is the heavenly wisdom of God an earthly folly to man. Literally speaking, this is so.”

Pierre reads this at a juncture in his life where he has just decided to follow a heavenly chronometer rather than conduct himself in the manner of normal men of average virtue. He believes he has made great sacrifices in favor of both Isabel and his mother, and to some extent also for his father. He believes that by following the clear course of God and godliness, he must be doing the right thing.

But it’s clear to any reader the Pierre is committing absurdities, ones that will make it impossible for him to live in the earthly community of men, whether or not they would be appropriate in heaven. Pierre insanely miscalculates the reactions of his mother and his cousin Glen Stanly to his decision to “marry” Isabel, and it’s clear that when his course of action lands him and two women he has made himself responsible for friendless and homeless in New York City, nearly arrested, his actions are not working out in normal human civilization—China to God’s England.

And Pierre and his friends don’t end well at all, seeming to put a capstone on the problems of adhering to what might appear the “virtuous” course. But does this countenance complacency, settling for human mediocrity? Consider Pierre’s plan: fake-marry his purported half-sister to avoid angering his mother, then adopt his former lover as his cousin in the household consisting of his fake marriage. Self-sacrificing, perhaps—but also sacrificing of just about everyone else in his life. Consider what a more normal, horological person might have done—a person, we should be careful to say, who is not heedless of virtue, but recognizes earthly limits: magnanimously acknowledge his half-sister with or without further evidence, force his mother to confront painful truths, and fulfill the promise he’s made to his fiancée. Is this a slap in the face to virtue or to Christianity? Or simply a sane, kind, and generous reaction to a difficult family situation?

Leon Howard and Hershel Parker, in their Historical Note to the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Pierre, survey several interpretations of the pamphlet and Melville’s attitude toward it and Plotinus Plinlimmon, who will appear briefly as a character in the novel as well. They quote finally from an article by Floyd C. Watkins before summing up:

If Plinlimmon states Melville’s theme in Pierre, if Melville seems to be merely a compromiser, if he seems too expedient in his virtue, the reader must see that some expediency and reconciliation are necessary for sanity and existence.

Although criticism is so disparate, several of the major commentators, including Dr. Murray, Arvin, and Thompson, have partially indicated a way of resolving the difficulties: by accepting that on an intellectual level Melville might often if not always agree with the ideas attributed to Plinlimmon while altogether dissociating himself from the blandly rational and self-satisfied tone in which Plinlimmon is reported to express them.

That seems like an excellent resolution to me.